


Control

by lupinity87



Category: This is Spinal Tap (1984)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-29
Updated: 2009-06-29
Packaged: 2019-10-19 12:57:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17601788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lupinity87/pseuds/lupinity87
Summary: They're very similar, David tells her, Nigel and Jeanine; long lost spiritual acquaintances even, and that of course they'll both recognise the connection instantly. The reality is somewhat different.





	Control

**Author's Note:**

> In the extended edition of the film (which I recommend!), it's mentioned that Nigel once slept with Jeanine. The thought of what was going through their heads at the time (besides the obvious) inspired me, so this focuses on Nigel and Jeanine's relationship from 1977 to 2000. Most of the dates and locations were taken from SpinalTapFan.com's A to Z, without which this would have been very confusing to write indeed - I've tried to keep it as 'canon' as possible.
> 
> First posted to LiveJournal - and then Dreamwidth - back in 2009 along with a load of other Spinal Tap stuff. Figured that it's time that I post some of the less terrible stuff to AO3.

The first time she meets Nigel, it's at a rehearsal. It's 1977 and she'd met David two weeks earlier, at a funeral of all places; a collision of kindred spirits to the soundtrack of planets aligning, or so she tells him. When David says that he wants to introduce her to the rest of Spinal Tap, she takes it as a sign, a cosmic acceptance of her soul into his universe. He speaks of his lifelong friend, Nigel, and says that she'll like him. They're very similar, he tells her, Nigel and Jeanine; long lost spiritual acquaintances even, and that of course they'll both recognise the connection instantly.

The reality is somewhat different; when David leads her into the small rehearsal studio, she greets the band with a controlled smile, shaking hands with the drummer and keyboardist (neither had stayed long enough for her to remember their names), and receiving a polite kiss on the cheek from Derek, the bassist. When she finally comes face to face with Nigel, she receives only a civil nod of acknowledgement with as little eye contact as possible. After he says "Hello," to her, he smiles at David, although she can see that the smile doesn't quite reach his eyes.

She's offered a drink and a chair to sit on while they tweak a new song, and she listens, and watches. She doubts that David notices the glances Nigel gives him, or the discreet smile he carries when the blond approves of one of his ideas (this smile, she notes, is almost entirely in his eyes this time), but she does. He reminds her of a pet dog; entirely dependant on his master's good nature, but perfectly happy to be so.

The first time she meets Nigel, she learns something – they've got more in common than David had predicted.

\- - -

The next time she meets Nigel is at the album launch party for _The Gospel According To Spinal Tap_. She tries to stay with David; the local press are here after all, and she wants to make her presence in the band's extended family known. The press are only interested in the band though, and while they're swept off outside for photos and informal interviews, she's left nursing a rum and coke and listening to Derek's wife. Pamela's used to all this, of course; she and the bassist have been married for years. She's always found these events to be rather tedious and a waste of her important time, and she tells Jeanine so, but adds that 'It's the price we pay for rich husbands, my dear.' Jeanine can't help but notice that she's chosen terribly expensive clothes and jewellery to waste her time in, and quickly drains the rest of her drink, giving her an excuse to leave Pamela and go to the bar.

She returns her glass to the barman and calls for another rum and coke, before changing her mind and asking him to make it a double. As she counts change from her purse she feels a taller man stand next to her at the bar, and doesn't realise until she glances sideways that it's Nigel. She says nothing, and it's not until she hands her money to the barman and takes her drink that he notices her. He nods at her and mutters her name in an attempt at required civility, and she replies likewise.

"Photos finished already?" she asks, not really interested.

"Mine are," he nods. "They want individual ones, David's having his done now." He watches her incline her head towards the door, tight-lipped. "I know you don't like me," he mutters, bluntly.

She looks up at him, expression indifferent. "And I know you don't like me."

He can't quite break contact with her cold stare, challenge hidden behind its passiveness. "Don't hurt him, Jeanine. He's a good man." He sees David approaching from the door to the gardens, and quickly turns his attention to his wallet as he waits for the barman to finish serving another customer.

As Jeanine greets David with a kiss, she knows that she's learnt something else about Nigel – she and he are on an equal standing with each other; a precarious balance that if tipped, could cause either one of them to lose David.

\- - -

The third time she meets Nigel, it's 1980 and the band are on the continent promoting _Shark Sandwich_. They have a few days in Paris with a gig there on the Saturday, so Jeanine flies over for the weekend. She arrives on the Friday evening, much to Nigel's annoyance; the two determinedly avoid each other, barely speaking a word. He holds his tongue when the hotel rooms have to be rearranged, forcing the band to pay up for an extra single room for Nigel as he's evicted from the one he was sharing with David. He doesn't even utter a complaint when she insists on accompanying them to a radio interview, claiming that their starsigns are unbalanced and she thinks someone might say something stupid if she doesn't even them out.

However, when she tries to stop David from going out in the Paris nightlife after the gig, he can't stay silent anymore.

"You're treating him like your pet, Jeanine! You can't stop him going out – it's what we do to unwind after gigs!"

"Like a pet? How dare... you told him to leg it out of there with the others while I wasn't even in the room to stop him!"

"Oh, and the fact that you would have stopped him hasn't got anything to do with it?"

"I don't know why I'm even standing here listening to this! You," she spits, pointing a manicured finger at him, "make me sick! The sound of your voice nauseates me!"

"Well, I won't subject you to it anymore then!" He turns on his feet and heads out of the hotel common room, briefly pausing at the door to reiterate his point. "Say what you fucking well like to me, but when you start controlling his life, don't expect me to sit back and watch!"

Jeanine's on his trail before the door's even swung shut, chasing him along the corridors towards his room. "Controlling his life, am I? Controlling his life? There was no control in his life before I got here! It was in cosmic shambles!"

Nigel puffs out an angry breath as he reaches his door, pulling the key out of his pocket and jamming it in the keyhole, his hands shaking with temper. "Cosmic shambles, my arse! What, were his planets parked wrong? Had to come and tell them to move?"

He finally gets the door open and angrily strides into his room, not closing it quickly enough to keep Jeanine out. She slams the door shut as soon as she's in; she doesn't want an audience of hotel customers running to the paper with gossip the next day.

"I did an astrological assessment of him, I'll have you know! It was a dreadful mess, he needed someone who knew how to sort it out!"

"What about someone who actually _cares_ about him?" he shouts, not restraining his voice anymore.

"Of course I bloody care about him! I bloody love him, don't I!"

"Really?" he yells sarcastically, voice breaking with the volume.

"Really!"

He stares at her for a moment, both panting and breathless with fury, before suddenly pushing her against the wall and kissing her. He doesn't know why he's doing it, but she's responding, and before either can consciously consider what they're doing, clothes are coming off, fingers are getting caught on buttonholes in their haste, and the smooth, recently-made bed sheets are cool against their skin. There's no grace in the act; it's raw and angry, built on rage and frustration, and it's over in minutes.

Jeanine realises afterwards that her jeans and lace underwear are still caught on one ankle. She silently pulls them back up and looks for her shirt, not daring to look at Nigel. After quickly dressing, she heads towards the door. Nigel stares at her in silent, guilty shock over what just happened, and when she catches his gaze, she blinks back with the same expression before wordlessly slipping out of the door.

As she hurries down the corridor to the room she's sharing with David, she tells herself that she's got the upper hand now; Nigel has to live with the guilt of sleeping with his best friend's girl. It doesn't cross her mind that he might be thinking the same of her, that she has to live with the guilt of cheating on her boyfriend with his best friend. The only thing that she _is_ sure of is that David won't find out – if she tells on Nigel, David will know what she did, and if Nigel tells on Jeanine, David will know what Nigel did. 

A truce has been reached.

\- - -

In 1982, Jeanine joins the band for part of their American _Smell The Glove_ tour, but barely shares a word with Nigel other than sniping remarks (from both sides). She certainly makes sure never to end up alone in his presence, because that would lead to an awkward silence, and an awkward silence would lead to acknowledging what happened in Paris. The first time she actually speaks to him – a proper conversation – is after the end of the tour. She and David had booked into a hotel in California for a couple of weeks instead of going straight home to England. However, a couple of weeks quickly became a couple of months, and their plans to stay became more long-term.

It's a Thursday afternoon when the phone rings in their rented apartment. David's in the next room browsing the channels on the telly, so it's Jeanine who answers.

"Hello?"

"Jeanine?"

She recognises the voice easily. "Nigel."

"Is David there?"

Jeanine looks at the closed door to the adjoining room and listens to the television ringing loudly through it; she's satisfied that David can't hear the conversation. "No, he's not here right now. Can I help you?" She says it out of politeness, not concern.

"I dunno – I just got a letter he sent me."

"Oh good, he was worried it wouldn't arrive – he didn't trust Airmail to deliver it. I guess you got the new phone number, then?"

"Yeah, I..." Nigel pauses. "What have you done? He says you're moving to America and getting married!"

"That's right. He was disappointed that you hadn't congratulated him yet, actually."

"Congratulate him? America! Bloody America! He's always been happy here, why d'you have to uproot him and take him from his home?"

"If he was happy in England, why would he want to leave? He heard that lots of people get married here just to become American, you know."

"Yeah, if you _marry_ an American! What, so he's marrying you there so he doesn't have to be English anymore?"

"I guess so. I probably should tell him that it doesn't work like that, really."

"Don't worry, _I'll_ –"

"Of course," Jeanine interrupts, "I haven't seen him so happy in a long time. Imagine how much it would hurt him to find out that his plan's all wrong?"

Nigel grits his teeth. "You're a right bitch, you know that, Jeanine?"

"Call me what you like. I love him, and I'm not letting go of him. Besides which, if he wants to become an American, there must be a reason for it. Perhaps he's trying to leave something in England behind, maybe?"

Nigel refuses to dignify the insinuation with a response, and hangs up, leaving the phone on Jeanine's end with a click and a hum. As she puts the receiver down, David walks into the room, having given up browsing the television.

"Who was that?" he asks, seeing her hand leave the phone.

"Nigel," she replies. "He got the letter, but couldn't speak for long because he's just going out."

"Oh. What did he say?"

She doesn't miss a beat as she walks towards him, placing a hand on his waist and kissing his cheek. "He said 'Congratulations.'"

Satisfied with the grin that her lie evokes, she smiles to herself. She realises something important about the phone call with Nigel, something that hasn't happened before. She's left him speechless, with no reply to her comment and no attempt to stand up for himself.

She's in control.

\- - -

It's 1992, the next time she encounters Nigel. They're in England again; it's the first time she's been back since moving to California, and she hates the fact that everything is pleasantly familiar. She refuses to admit to herself that driving on the left feels right, that the Queen's face on the money seems strangely welcoming (particularly as she and David are anti-royalists), and that the quiet English countryside sounds – the sparrows and blue-tits flitting outside, with the traffic being nothing more than a distant murmur of the A26 across fields – are something that she's missed terribly.

The final gig of the _Break Like The Wind_ tour is tomorrow, at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Jeanine's only here because it's being filmed and she doesn't want anything to go wrong on video; not after Marty DiBergi's catastrophe a decade earlier. As neither David nor Jeanine own a house here anymore, Nigel insists that they stay with him – the former because he cares, and the latter because he's accepted that David won't stay there without Jeanine. He lives on a farm now, just outside Tunbridge Wells. It's fairly modest considering his small fortune; there's the farmhouse itself, which houses a small studio extension in what was the third bedroom, and just enough land for his Shetland ponies.

David and Jeanine are going back home to California the day after London, so he and Nigel want to record some song ideas before he leaves, and Jeanine offers to make tea while they tune up. While she would never thank Nigel personally, she does appreciate his invitation to stay at his place (although she's fully aware that he doesn't have a choice if he doesn't want to upset David), and the tea is her way of showing a begrudging acceptance towards him. After all, she's still the one in control, and she'll prove it by taking David away again in a couple of days.

She pours the tea into mugs, adds milk and two sugars to each, and carries all three towards the small studio, precariously clutched between her two hands. The door is slightly ajar so she gently nudges it open with an elbow, carefully watching the tea so as not to spill any. The men inside don't seem to hear her, so she quietly shuffles into the dark room and puts the mugs down on a worktop, not taking her eyes off them until she's sure they won't spill over the mixing desk. When she finally looks up, she sees the guitarists behind the glass-screened enclosure; David is sat directly behind Nigel, his chest flush against the brunette's back, with his arms wrapped around him to play the acoustic guitar on Nigel's lap. The ceiling lights in the recording room are on, unlike the dark mixing area that Jeanine stands in, and she's sure that they wouldn't see her through the glass reflections even if they looked up.

She feels like an intruder as she stands and watches. Nigel looks back at David with a smile, adding his own hands further up the guitar neck to play a melody against the blond's chords. As they play together on the one guitar, David rests his chin on Nigel's shoulder and nuzzles against the younger man's jaw.

She's spent her life controlling every aspect of it that she could – from only making friends with the right people at primary school, to keeping track of her husband's life over the past decade. She realises now, though, that there is no control between him and Nigel. There is only a mutual circle of give and take; from the way Nigel leads over David's rhythm guitar but pulls back for David to choose the harmonies, to the way David's face fits perfectly against Nigel's neck, the latter resting his cheek against the blond hair. Neither man has any hold over the other – that's how their relationship works, Jeanine realises. There's no control, because there's no _need_ for control; everything fits without it.

She can't compete with that; she's never known how to make things 'just fit', and she wishes that she did. She quietly leaves the studio, careful not to interrupt them, and heads outside to the stables to think. She realises for the first time that some things should not, and cannot, be pushed and pressured and maintained so precisely.

Her entire life strategy has been wrong all along, and the thought leaves her feeling terribly lost.

\- - -

It's 2000; a new millennium, a new era. A new start, Jeanine thinks to herself (although she'd rather not). She hasn't spoken to Nigel in many years; she's barely spoken with David for the last month, either. Since seeing the guitarists together in Nigel's studio in Kent so many years ago, she's tried to let go, to stop checking up on what David does. She's let him go out and socialise without her against her better judgement, and forced herself to trust in the relationship because they love each other, not just because she hasn't given it a chance to go wrong. She realises though, over time, that she can't let go of things and just trust them to run smoothly. She can't expect things to be okay if she's not forcing them to be okay. By the time she realises this though, it's too late. David's found his freedom and new friends, and Jeanine can't live with that; David, meanwhile, has realised that he can't live as things were before.

After months of pleading, planning and promising, the two come to a decision – one that neither want, but both find more preferable than the alternative. The divorce is simple and amiable, unlike Derek and Pamela's had been. Both look for separate apartments while waiting for their finances to be settled, and when the divorce is made final and the money is split, the moving process begins.

Nigel flies over to California to help with the move. Jeanine's in the main bedroom when he arrives, sorting the walk-in wardrobe's contents into David's and her own. She hears the front door open and the murmured greetings that follow, but continues to sort their clothes into separate boxes. It isn't until she's folded and packed up all of David's smart shirts and is halfway through her own, that she's interrupted by a tentative knock on the bedroom door.

She knows that David wouldn't knock, so there's no question as to who it is. "Come in."

Nigel enters slowly, his steps hesitant. When he peers around the wardrobe door and sees her, he nods guardedly. "Jeanine."

"Nigel," she cautiously replies.

He looks for a moment like he wants to say something, but isn't sure how to word it. Eventually, he settles for, "I'm sorry. About you and David."

"Are you?"

He nods sincerely. "Yeah. I know you meant a lot to each other." He nervously looks down. "I know we've never got on well, but if you need anything – help packing, or anything... You know."

She smiles wryly and thanks him. She's sure that she won't ask him for help, but she appreciates the thought nonetheless. Strangely, she realises that she doesn't really have anything against him, now. She doesn't like him, certainly, but she can't bring herself to dislike him. She and David have vowed to remain friends, and she couldn't imagine them not being so – the least she can do is accept Nigel as a part of his life. The divorce isn't even strictly his fault, she realises; when she thinks back, it was inevitable from the beginning, really. Maybe it took Nigel to make her realise that, she considers, and she has the feeling that life's going to be quieter from now on. She wants to be with David, terribly, but she doesn't _need_ to be with him, and she finally understands the difference.

Once she finishes folding the shirt in her hand, she puts it into one of her boxes and slowly walks to Nigel. She holds out her hand; he stares at it for a second, before raising his own and shaking it. When they make eye contact, there's a sense of weary acceptance. It's not overly friendly, but it's comfortable.

"I still don't much like you, you know," she mutters, holding back a smile.

His mouth twitches in turn. "The feeling's mutual." He briefly smirks and releases her hand, moving to pick up a shirt and fold it for her.

As they empty the wardrobe in silence, she realises that the mutual indifference is actually somewhat comfortable. She's letting go of everything, leaving David – her husband, her house, her life – and it occurs to her that it's nice to have something constant.

If Nigel's quiet indifference is all she has to hold onto, she accepts it graciously.


End file.
